A Tale of Two Tapes

2007: A year to remember

After federal prosecutors indicted Sheriff Mike Carona, his wife and top mistress on public-corruption charges in October, Carona not surprisingly declared himself "not guilty." H. Dean Steward, Carona's defense lawyer, added that the sheriff "is so anxious to fight these charges that we have to hold him back." David Wiechert, another Carona defense lawyer, described the case against the sheriff as a "witch-hunt." Mike Schroeder, Carona's political strategist, schmoozed reporters with descriptions of federal law-enforcement agents whose behavior was unethical-if not criminal.

Forget the hoopla. The keys to the unraveling of Carona's two-term reign at the Orange County Sheriff's Department are simple: two tapes. One is a now-infamous 21-minute DVD made by three men gang-raping an unconscious girl on a pool table in Newport Beach. The second is a potentially more explosive three-hour audio recording that will either help Carona's cries of innocence or prove him to be one of the biggest crooks ever to wear a sheriff's badge in the U.S.

The contents of this second tape remain secret.

Jack Gould

Carona

Weekly readers won't be surprised to learn that both tapes were made by Haidls, a family Carona plucked from obscurity and made famous. In 2002, Gregory Scott Haidl thought it would be hilarious if he and two buddies filmed themselves raping an unconscious 16-year-old at a late-night high school party. They also repeatedly shoved a Snapple bottle, apple juice can, lit cigarette (filter first) and pool cue deep inside the girl's vagina and rectum. In the process, they laughed and danced. They dragged her, slapped her, grabbed her by her hair, threw her on a pool table and spilled semen on her motionless body.

I rehash the event because Greg Haidl's rape tape was shot in the garage of his father's Newport Beach ocean-view home. At the time, Don Haidl—Greg's daddy—was Carona's unqualified but handpicked assistant sheriff. There's a good reason the usually gruff, chain-smoking elder Haidl is grinning ear to ear in his sheriff's department portrait. Until Carona gave him an official uniform with four stars on the lapels, Haidl's history included serious allegations ranging from Mexican gunrunning to bribery of a cop to masterminding massive frauds. His occupation? I'm not making this up: used-car salesman.

Hollywood, are you paying attention?

But in 1998, Haidl had the one thing Carona—a glorified bailiff without one minute of street cop experience—needed more than any other to become sheriff: a pile of cash. Estimations of his worth have ranged from $30 million to $90 million. Think Beverly Hillbillies, The Dark Side.

At the core of any scandal is sex or money. In Carona's case, it's both. You may recall that Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters, Carona's opponent in the 1998 race, claimed that Haidl had tried to broker a contributions-for-appointment deal with him. Walters said no thanks. Haidl landed in Carona's camp, which went on to narrowly win the election and take over the nation's fifth-largest sheriff's department. Shortly thereafter, Carona and Haidl proclaimed themselves—again, you can't make this up—"brothers for life."

To mark his victory, the newly elected sheriff—who'd soon appear on religious broadcasting channels to announce his faith—took advantage of a woman during the height of his inauguration celebration. The lady wanted Carona to hire her husband as a deputy. The sheriff took her to a hotel room, screwed her—and then declined to hire her husband.

But revelations about the real Carona were years away from emerging in the mainstream press. The sheriff enjoyed top ranking as OC's most popular public official largely due to one gruesome event. Skilled homicide detectives at the OCSD (and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department) solved the national-headline-grabbing Samantha Runnion murder case, but Carona made sure network news cameras focused solely on him. CNN's Larry King dubbed him "America's sheriff," a title Carona quickly incorporated in his re-election brochures. He even fueled speculation that he'd challenge Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez or U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.

The beginning of Carona's end was Greg Haidl. The cocky, dope-smoking teenager played his prized rape tape to buddies—and then forgot where he left it. Fate stepped in. A Good Samaritan found the DVD. It eventually landed on the desk of horrified detectives at the Newport Beach Police Department.

The simple act of losing that tape ignited a chain of events that ultimately unmasked Carona and his inner circle as not just petty, egotistical bullies, but also crooks wearing badges. They were, we now know, gifted liars consumed with extramarital affairs and quick, easy cash from businessmen looking for favors that could only come from an agency with an $800 million annual budget, more than 4,000 employees and high-tech spy equipment that would excite the KGB.

What type of sheriff would take contributions from a violent Las Vegas titty-bar owner with ties to the Chicago Mafia? What type of sheriff would later pose in uniform for a picture in a Newport Beach bar with that clown? What type of sheriff would vouch for that man's character just months before the guy landed in federal prison for racketeering?